d. Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life. e. Lyric poetry is the expression of the personal feelings of the poet translated into rhythms analogous to the nature of his emotions. f. Tin is a metal lighter than gold. g. Logic is the art of reasoning. h. Cheese is a caseous preparation of milk. i. A state is an ethnic unit which lies within a geographical unit. 2. Wherein, if at all, are the following classifications faulty? a. Students may be divided naturally into three groups, the athletic, the idle, and the industrious. b. The chief poetic forms are the epic, the narrative poem, the lyric, the elegy, the ode, and the sonnet. c. Education: primary, secondary, collegiate, technical, scientific, and professional. SUGGESTED SUBJECTS FOR THEMES 1. What a college literary society does for its members. 2. What constitutes success in life? 3. The secret of popularity. 4. The tyranny of fashion. 5. Does the right always triumph in the end? 6. What makes a gentleman? 7. The modern scientific spirit. 8. Patriotism. 9. The function of the newspaper. 10. The distinction between nature and art. II. The distinction between the lyric and the reflective poem. 12. The distinction between character and reputation. 13. What makes a nation great? 14. The value of cheerfulness. 15. My intended profession and why I have chosen it. 16. The disadvantages of having to work one's way through college. 17. Household science as a college study. 18. The qualifications of a good engineer. 19. How to make a cast ng. 20. Reinforced concrete. 21. Methods of maintaining soil fertility. 24. The advantages of mixed farming. 28. How a railroad is managed. 29. How artificial ice is made. 30. The best method of sewage disposal. 31. The steam turbine. 32. The development of electric interurban railways. 33. Recent improvements in automobiles. 34. The value of lightning rods. 35. The development of wireless telegraphy. 36. The weakness of the feudal system. 37. The influence of sea power. 40. Fighting pests with insect allies. (See Little Masterpieces of Science, p. 123.) 41. Protective coloring among animals. (See Natural Selection, by A. R. Wallace, or The Colours of Animals, by E. B. Poulton.) 42. The aim of culture. (See the chapter on "Sweetness and Light" in Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy.) CHAPTER X ARGUMENTATION 98. Definition. - Argumentation may be defined as that kind of discourse wherein the aim is to win assent, or, in other words, to induce belief in the truth of a proposition. In argumentation the writer assumes that there may be difference of opinion between the reader and himself with regard to the subject discussed, and his object is to remove that difference by bringing the reader over to his way of thinking. 99. Difference between argumentation and exposition. It is the presupposition that there may be difference of opinion on the subject discussed that distinguishes, in the main, argumentation from exposition. In exposition the presumption is that the reader is at one with the writer in desiring simply a clear understanding of the subject. When he understands fully and clearly what the writer is trying to make him understand, all has been done that needs to be done. Whether he believes it to be true or false is immaterial; it is sufficient if he simply understands it. In argumentation, however, it is different. Here it is the reader's beliefs or opinions with regard to a subject, not his understanding of it merely, that the writer is concerned with chiefly. Explanation may, of course, play an important part in an argumentative discourse; but it is always a part subservient to the main purpose of the discourse, which is the influencing of the belief or opinions of the reader. In the following passage from Darwin's Origin of Species, for example, note how strongly this purpose comes out: The complex and little known laws governing the production of varieties are the same, as far as we can judge, with the laws which have governed the production of distinct species. In both cases physical conditions seem to have produced some direct and definite effect, but how much we cannot say. Thus, when varieties enter any new station, they occasionally assume some of the characters proper to the species of that station. With both varieties and species, use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable effect; for it is impossible to resist this conclusion when we look, for instance, at the logger-headed duck, which has wings incapable of flight, in nearly the same condition as in the domestic duck; or when we look at the burrowing tucu-tucu, which is occasionally blind, and then at certain moles, which are habitually blind and have their eyes covered with skin; or when we look at the blind animals inhabiting the dark caves of America and Europe. With varieties and species, correlated variation seems to have played an important part, so that when one part has been modified other parts have been necessarily modified. With both varieties and species, reversion to longlost characters occasionally occurs. How inexplicable on the theory of creation is the occasional appearance of stripes on the shoulders and legs of the several species of the horsegenus and of their hybrids! How simply is this fact explained if we believe that these species are all descended from a striped progenitor, in the same manner as the several domestic breeds of the pigeons are descended from the blue and barred rock pigeon! 100. Ways in which belief may be induced. Belief in the truth of a proposition may be induced either by the method of persuasion, that is by appealing to the will or the feelings, or by the method of conviction, that is by appealing to the understanding. It is only in the realms of pure science, however, that we attempt to reason dispassionately. Whenever we approach life or the questions which concern life, we put more or less feeling into our discourse. In literature there is, virtually, no such thing as pure argumentation; persuasion enters, to some degree at least, into practically all argumentative discourses of the ordinary or literary kind, -the kind, that is, with which we are here concerned. On the other hand, pure persuasion is as rare as pure argumentation. Persuasion must have a substratum of reasoning before it can be widely effective. We may move for the moment by an appeal to the passions or prejudices of our readers, but the effect will not be very lasting if there is no solid, logical basis to our argument. We may, as modern psychology hints, be very much less subject to the sway of reason than we suppose; but we are so constituted that we expect to have our understanding convinced before we yield assent. Most argumentative discourses, then, are a mixture of reasoning and persuasion. They accomplish their end partly by conviction and partly by persuasion, aiming always at a happy combination of the two methods. The two methods, in fact, are complementary, and ideal argumentation would, as Pro |